


Hold Me Fast

by saellys



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Ballad 39: Tam Lin, F/M, Fereldan, Lothering, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 19:42:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12394878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys
Summary: Stay clear of Cairthaugh, said old Barlin when Marian and Bethany first introduced themselves.The man that lives out there, he’ll take your heart.Marian didn't think it would be quite so literal.





	1. Bold As Brass

**Author's Note:**

> @kayla-bird mentioned a few days back how much they wanted a Tam Lin/DA2 crossover... and someone should still write that, because this took on a life of its own.

The garden has gone thoroughly to seed, but Marian can see beyond the weeds and vines to where the beds are separated and the soil is still rich. She pushes through the thickest places, heedless of the noise she makes, and pauses at the sight of a white horse tearing turf by the fence.

The place isn’t what she’d call an estate, but neither is it a hovel. _Abandoned_ is a word she would certainly use, had she not been warned otherwise. An herb bed runs along the northern face of the tall old house, and a trellis above it. The herbs’ stems have turned woody and the vines have climbed free of the trellis, over a broken window. Marian reaches to clear a space and peer in, but no sooner do her fingers brush the leaves than there is cold steel at her throat.

“Qui misit te?” says a voice as sharp as the blade’s edge.

“What?”

A noise of exasperation. “Who sent you, trespasser?”

She keeps her hands out, and turns slowly, and the swordman allows this. “I go where I want,” says Marian, “and it isn’t trespassing if you’re squatting.”

The green glare that meets her from the other end of the sword makes it clear that her humor is not appreciated, but Marian is used to that. “Then explain yourself,” he grates.

“I came to see if the townsfolk are right to fear this place.”

“They are.”

She studies his pointed ears and pointed armor. “Maybe,” she says, giving him a crooked grin, “but they’re not me.” And she draws her sword and bats his away.

If her speed impresses him, he makes no sign. He uses the momentum of her swing to spin his greatsword around toward her ribs. Marian means only to test him, but when she hears the steel sing in motion, it occurs to her he may not be the type for a friendly contest.

She blocks, the impact snapping down her arms and shoulders, and in that moment he leans close, removes one hand from the hilt, and reaches past their locked blades to grip Marian’s leather jerkin in his spiked gauntlet. She braces herself against his pull, but instead he shoves hard.

She hits the ground, eyes shut tight, a breath forced out of her. The next one she takes is sharp with the scent of broken elfroot and rosemary stems. Still grinning, she opens her eyes. The sun is behind him, but there is light within his silhouette--just a spark down the odd lines on his arms.

It dissipates as quickly as it appeared, and he straightens and returns his sword to his back. “Get out,” he suggests. And he stalks away, up the steps into the house.

Marian pulls a handful of crushed herbs when she stands. On her way she looks back at the house, but it offers nothing more.

Her sister, her mother, and the dog all look up when Marian lets the door slam behind her. With the stove stoked, it’s hotter inside the former stable than it is under the noon sun; Max’s tongue lolls. She sets the elfroot on the kitchen table, and Bethany picks it up immediately. They’ve been working with dried stores since they moved--the seeds they planted outside have not yet sprouted. “Where did you find this?”

“Here and there,” Marian says. She takes an apple from the bag that by the ladder to the loft, and bites in with relish to avoid meeting her mother’s eyes.

“You’ve got twigs in your hair,” Bethany says. Marian shrugs. “I’ll need more jars for the next batch of salve.”

They trade for those with a potter in town. “I’ll go and check the snares.”

But on cue, Carver comes in the door with a pair of coneys. He glances between his sisters and his mother, and looks as though he’d like to turn back around.

Leandra smiles and moves away from the boiling pot, and fills two horn cups from the bucket of river water Marian fetched that morning, and gives one to Carver and one to Marian. “You’re flushed,” she says to Marian. “Sit a moment and tell us about your morning, dear.”

Snared herself, Marian can only do as she bids. She takes a long drink of water. “I went to see the old Cairthaugh place.”

“You didn’t!” Bethany is more fascinated than scandalized. “What’s it like?”

“Overgrown, and occupied.”

“Marian,” her mother warns.

“It’s fine,” Marian replies. “I think we have an understanding.”

Leandra sighs the sigh reserved for her eldest, voiced and weary, but unsurprised. “We’ve only just settled here. We can’t afford to provoke anyone.”

Marian sets the cup down firmly. “Provoke! I have never--” At Bethany’s thoughtful sound, she revises, “You know how careful I am.”

And she is. She doesn’t leave anyone who could hurt them alive. But it would be nice to go more than half a year without having to move.

Her mother only watches her. “There are reasons for those stories,” Bethany says when the silence becomes too much.

“Yes,” Marian says, “superstition. The man in that house is like any other.”

“Actually,” Carver says, “those stories aren’t about Cairthaugh at all. They just mispronounced my name.” Bethany throws a dry stem at him.

Leandra is hardly placated, but before she can press, Marian takes a coney to trade with the potter, and on the way she stares at the west ridge that hides the overgrown garden from her view. She feels remorse, just a little, for lying to her mother.

The man in that house is not like any other.

* * *

She returns two days later, when the salve of fresh elfroot has set up. Tied into a bundle at her hip are the jar and a runty carrot from their garden. The latter she offers to the white horse from across the fence, and scratches beneath his forelock as he chews it, greens and all. It only takes a moment for the front door to creak open. “Good morning!” she calls.

He whistles through his teeth and the horse trots to him. “Impeccably trained,” Marian observes.

The elf pats the horse’s neck and, grudgingly, moves toward her. “The only beast that would carry me. What is it you want?”

Marian presents the jar. “This was made by my sister, from some of the elfroot in your garden.”

He doesn’t take it. “A thief and a trespasser,” he says, and she thinks there might be a wry note in his voice.

“Does a thief bring back gifts?”

“If you stole a sheep and brought me a scarf, I’d not thank you.” But he takes the jar in one gauntleted hand, uncorks it, and sniffs. “This is potent. Yet you didn’t land a hit.”

Marian nods toward his arms. “For your scars.”

All the civility and, dare she say, openness of the exchange thus far abruptly disappears. He seals the jar and hands it back. “There’s no salve for these.”

She has overstepped, clear enough, and ought to apologize and retreat now. But neither apology nor retreat was ever her strength. “What are they?”

His eyes take the measure of her. “They are lyrium, burned into my flesh to provide the power my former master required of his pet.”

And for the first time in Marian Hawke’s life, she doesn’t quite know what to say. She tries, “When did you escape?”

“Nearly a year ago.”

“How long have you been hiding here?”

“Three months.”

Two months before her family arrived beyond the ridge. “Quite a reputation you’ve made in that time.”

“Occasionally, Imperial bounty hunters will come looking for me. I expect their corpses in the woods built my reputation.”

“Partially, but that doesn’t account for the bit about virgin sacrifices.” His brow creases, and she needs to lighten this conversation somehow, so she fights a smile and adds, “Or is it sacrifices of virginity?”

She sees the instant when he kens her meaning, and a sound escapes him, before he covers it with a cough, that might just be an actual giggle.

Emboldened, she says, “If you ground those hunters’ bones, the powder could feed your garden. Ashes help as well.”

He narrows his eyes--lovely eyes they are, suited to a glower, but marvelously bright in that moment when he laughed. She hopes she hasn’t misread him, that he isn’t the sort to be thrown by a shift from flirtation to talk of grinding human bones. “Why would I do that?”

“Because if you make this place look like someone actually lives here, the townsfolk might not talk so.” While he turns to regard the garden, she presses on, “And if you keep me stocked with fresh elfroot, I’ll give you a share of our profits.”

His gaze returns to hers at once, and she wonders how long it’s been since he’s had coin. “Done. But I don’t know how to garden.”

That is, of course, what she counted on. “I do.” She holds out her hand. “Marian Hawke.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he removes one clawed gauntlet and takes her hand. His bare palm is cool. “Fenris.”

“Fenris,” she repeats, the name shaped by her grin. “Here’s to fruitful business, pun intended.”

“I expect it always is with you,” he replies, and he could mean the business or the pun, but either way Marian only grins wider.

* * *

That summer her shoulders darken, the herb bed prospers, and Lothering begins to feel like home. The white horse whickers whenever she approaches, for Marian still brings carrots to keep him out of the patch they tend at Cairthaugh. Fenris’s greetings are more neutral--he calls her only by her last name, his voice blunt--and their time is spent largely in silence, if a comfortable one.

When the grapes on the north trellis are ripe, they stoop side by side, a basket between them. It is only half full by the time the vine is bare, and the grapes are small, but Marian tries one and finds it sweet and blessedly cool. She offers another to Fenris. He accepts it, and when he puts it in his mouth she watches the scantest flicker of pleasure cross his face. He nods in stoic satisfaction. Marian snorts, and declares a race to the river.

She’s halfway across the field, empty pail bouncing at her side, when she hears her pursuit: not feet, but hoofbeats. He outstrips her, bareback on the horse. “Foul!” she calls after him, but she’s winded and the word stays in the dust of his passing. When at last she reaches the riverbank he is knee deep in the water, leaning against the horse’s side with a smirk as rare as it is infuriating.

Much as she would love to use the pail to soak that silver hair of his, Marian doesn’t rise to it. She pulls her boots off and steps into the river, and breathes through her nose to keep from panting as she washes the dirt from her fingernails and face. All the while she’s conscious of him watching, as close as he ever gets to indolence.

When she’s finished she fills the pail she turns back to shore, but the horse splashes over and Fenris reaches down, and Marian only pretends to deliberate before she grabs his wrist and lets him haul her up behind him. As they leave the river he swings sideways, one hand in the horse’s mane, to retrieve her boots.

He sits back up, and Marian locks her arm around his waist--the roll of the horse’s hindquarters discomfits her. How does he ride like he was born to it? He says nothing when she shifts closer, her thighs nested with his.

Not for the first time that day, she feels a pang. This cannot last, not in its current form.

Her feet stay clean all the way back to the house, where they use an old broken barrel to crush the grapes, and a length of clean cheesecloth borrowed from Bethany to strain them. Then the juice and the river water go into the large clay jug Marian traded a doe for, and then the most precious ingredient--a tiny amount of yeast. And then they cork it, and Fenris stows it away in the house’s shade. Marian waits on the steps as the sun dips, surveying all they’ve accomplished.

When Fenris returns and sits beside her, Marian says, “I think I ought to stay away for a while.”

“Oh?” His voice is neutral.

She nods, keeping her eyes on the cabbage bed. “The whispers in town aren't about this place anymore. They're about ‘that Hawke girl’.” And untrue, all of them--they have not touched each other but to shake hands, and today on the horse. Did he feel her heartbeat through her jerkin and his tunic?

“And you… care what they say?”

It's a fair question, and under normal circumstances the answer would be _absolutely not_. What is it to her if some goodwife clasps her child’s shoulders and steers them to the other side of the street as they pass the Hawkes’ market stall? “If they're staring at me,” she tells him, “there's a chance they'll notice Bethany.”

He's quick. “Your sister is a mage.” He fills the word with weariness and disgust. She has only heard a sliver of what caused it.

Marian meets his gaze, working to keep hers even. “I'm trusting you with this.”

Fenris’s green eyes hold a conflict. Is he sorting through the same considerations she did? It's not as if there's someone he could tell. The people who hunt him wouldn't care about Bethany, and the people who would care about Bethany have nothing to offer Fenris against his hunters.

“As I trust you,” he answers. Marian resists the urge to visibly relax. She gives him a nod and looks away. “She must have uncommon strength of character.”

The  _for a mage_ goes unspoken. “She does.”

“Do what you must to protect your family.”

She will _not_ cry. Nearly a year he’s been alone, and before that, was there anyone who treated him with kindness? As for her, from the time it became clear that Marian would not be the Hawke child to inherit their father’s gifts, her companions were the dog and a blunted sword. Little has changed but the sharpness of the sword. “I'll still come by. Bring your coin, harvest the elfroot. And I'll want some of that wine when it's ready. As for the rest of it…” She casts a glance around the garden. “I doubt you even need me anymore.”

There is silence for several breaths. Finally she glances at him sidelong. He is watching her, eyes unreadable. She swallows with effort. “Well,” she says, hating how insufficient it sounds. “I’ll be going then.”

Marian puts on her boots and stands, and when she turns Fenris reaches up to give her a handful of herbs. “Vitae benefaria, Hawke.”

She forces a grin and scoops the herbs from his hand, and carries them out of his garden and all the way home, where she puts her arms around Bethany, tight, like the ground might roll beneath them.

“What was that for?” Bethany asks when she lets go.

Marian let a few waves of emotion wash over her on the walk home, and now her grin is genuine. “I need a reason to love my little sister?”


	2. Lady Let Alone

Her self-imposed exile lasts all of a week--not even long enough for the rumors to die.

The afternoon heat sets Marian to daydreaming, and the market is practically abandoned. She sets her chin atop her crossed arms on the plank that serves as their counter. Bethany leans against one of the stall’s columns, a jar ready in her hand for customers to sniff. She is by far the better saleswoman.

Distantly Marian notes her moving away to approach a group. “Good day, sers. The road can be dangerous, and you’ll not find a better salve for wounds--”

They sidestep Bethany like a flock of birds, speaking low, and the shape of the words pull Marian back from thoughts of a white horse in a sun-drenched field. She cranes her neck to follow their path. Did they say _Carettarius_?

Bethany rejoins her. “What is it?”

“We should pack up,” Marian says.

“Right,” says Bethany, who is used to trusting her sister’s instincts for danger. “Will the scene we cause by leaving now make things worse?”

She is wise, and in this moment Marian hates that. “Probably,” she says through her teeth.

“Another quarter hour,” Bethany says.

Marian chafes, but they do sell three jars to a mill worker. A quarter hour will not be the difference between life and death. She lays strips of old rags between the jars in their little barrow. It’s still daylight and they would not come for him until dark. She pushes the barrow, and Bethany links their arms to slow her down.

“I can come with you,” Bethany says when they reach their house.

Marian only shakes her head, puts the barrow in the shade, and breaks into a run.

From the top of the west ridge she can see his house, the garden, and the white horse grazing. All is peaceful. She sprints to the door and strikes it, shouts his name, tries again when he does not appear. Her growl of frustration is loud enough to spook the horse, and for good measure she kicks the pail off the front step. Then she spots him emerging from the woods, a pheasant in hand. The Maker is real and she’s going to give alms to every Chantry sister she sees for the rest of her life.

He sees her coming to meet him, and speeds his pace. “Hunters,” Marian gasps, stumbling. Fenris puts out a hand to steady her. “Four of them, in Lothering. They had maroon jackets.” She can see by his expression that she was right to suspect them.

“Just four?”

She winces at her assumption, at the danger of assuming. “Four at least. They know the house. If you leave now, you can be well away by the time they get here. I can stall them.”

His grip on her arm tightens, then releases, and he moves past her. “Help me with the brush pile and the broken fence.”

Marian turns to follow, and finds that Bethany has sent help. Max waits beside the white horse.

By nightfall the fence posts are laid atop the brush, a few meters out from the front gate--neither obstacle nor trap. The pheasant is plucked and hanging in the sparse but well swept kitchen. The horse is tied to a tree in the woods, baited with carrots. Fenris sits on the front steps with his naked greatsword across his knees, and Marian and Max wait just inside the door. Her pulse is high, her breath unsteady. She does not have his patience.

The sun has been down an hour when she hears him, over the sound of the whetstone. “Six.”

Dread slithers in her gut. “Damn.”

“Quiet now.”

Fifty silent breaths, and then: “Avanna, Fenris. Good to see you again.”

“Considering what happened last time, I’m surprised you decided to try again.” Dry and conversational. He sounds so bloody confident it’s almost enough to set Marian at ease.

“It’s not just about the coin anymore, slave.” Marian digs her teeth into her lip. She’d very much like to kill that one.

“Not afraid you’ll lose your head for good?”

“Not when we have the drop on you. You’ve become careless. Time to give yourself up.”

A pause, just long enough that he might be considering it. Marian asked him earlier what the signal phrase means. He said he’d tell her after.

“Vishante kaffas,” Fenris says, and they attack.

Strategically, it’s not an ideal situation, but there is nothing ideal about three-to-one odds. The door and steps are a choke point and they ought to be baiting the hunters _in_ to the house, where the close quarters and furniture could give an advantage. Small chance of that.

So instead Marian lets the dog go first, and spins out behind him in time to be narrowly missed by a crossbow bolt. Fenris is at the bottom of the steps, engaged with the leader. The other five are fanned out, and Marian chooses the second from the left, the better to draw all three on that side. Max breaks right.

Her hunter slashes, quick but shy of the right distance, and manages only a shallow cut on her shoulder. Marian strikes high and, when the hunter blocks, kicks his knee. A yelp echoes inside the helmet. He drops, and Marian turns to the leftmost, who is bringing his crossbow around, half a second too late. She swats it and his shot goes wide. Her sword tip finds the gap in the side of his armor, under the ribs just where Fenris said it would be. She sets her off hand on the pommel and puts her weight behind it. The hunter dies in a gout of blood.

Next she returns to finish the first one, who struggles to rise. Her blade slides across his throat. She looks away: the leader is on the ground, still alive, and Max has another down, jaws around his neck.

Fenris is alight. One hand grips the middle hunter’s helmet--no, when he turns Marian sees his hand is inside, _through_ the steel--and he levers the man into the path of his fellow’s sword, then kicks them both away. Marian intercepts the entangled hunters and finishes off the one Fenris left alive. She crosses to the one on the right, and Max lets go long enough for Marian to stab down, hard, through the mangled gorget.

A crossbow fires, and Marian turns in time to see Fenris lean out of the bolt’s path. It nicks his ear instead of finding a home in his eye. His markings flash, and he bends down and plunges his hand into the leader’s chest.

The hunter struggles, but it’s over when Fenris removes his hand, and the leader’s heart with it.

“Oh,” says Marian. Fenris turns to regard her. “Is that how you left the corpses in the woods?”

He nods, his eyes carefully blank.

She grins at him. “That explains some things.”

 _Stay clear of Cairthaugh_ , said old Barlin when Marian and Bethany first introduced themselves. _The man that lives out there, he’ll take your heart_.

“‘Vishante kaffas’,” Fenris says later, when the hunters’ bodies burn high on their brush pyre and they’ve eaten the pheasant they roasted with rosemary over the same flames and Marian has sent the dog home after cleaning the blood from his muzzle, “means ‘you shit on my tongue’.”

“Tevene is such a beautiful language.” Marian tests a shortsword one of the hunters had--it feels too light, unbalanced in her hand. “Do you think I ought to take up a shield?”

He shrugs. “More to carry.”

“More to hit with,” she counters. She finds one and fits it to her left arm, hefts it for a charge, and then hisses as the night air stings her shoulder, where the cut has clotted but not sealed.

“Come here,” Fenris says, already reaching for a stalk of elfroot, one gauntlet off.

Marian moves toward him, but her foot strikes a hunter’s fallen pack and makes a hollow sound. She bends to investigate. “Fenris! They had wine!”

It’s not _good_ wine. But it does the job, and she savors it straight from the bottle as Fenris crushes a leaf and pulls her sleeve away to apply the juice. She feels his bare fingertips on the wound, and then the elfroot takes effect and numbs the spot.

She has another drink, and nods toward his ear. “May I?” He tilts his head. Marian presses her thumb against the crushed leaf and runs it carefully over the place where the crossbow bolt skimmed just below the tip. His skin is warm. “Little enough damage for such a battle.”

This close, she can see his lips twitch, then still again. “How many battles have you seen, old sage?”

“I try not to fight more than one man at a time,” she admits. Not without Carver, at any rate.

“A good strategy, if it can be helped. In the past, when more than one came looking for me, it was a sign I should move on.” He swigs the wine.

Marian goes back with another round of elfroot, just to be safe--it wouldn’t do to get infected. Certainly not if he means to travel soon. She bites her lip so she’ll have something else to think about.

“If there's any chance to put an end to their pursuit someday,” Fenris muses, “it lies in the fact that they do not expect anyone to be unafraid of me, let alone to fight beside me. And they won’t expect you to be any braver or cleverer than the fools they recruit.”

“That’s… both insulting and comforting.” She should go home. It’s late, he’s confusing her, and the wine doesn’t help, only drives her emotions to extremes.

He turns his head, and Marian’s fingers slip from his ear. His eyes are green as glass. “I didn’t expect you, Hawke.”

His lips are warm. She tastes the wine on his mouth. He smells--well, the air fills with the scent of elfroot when he pushes her down. Marian thrills at the weight of him. He pulls off her scabbard and belt. She brings her knees up around his hips, and he draws back enough to say, “Inside.”

Precisely where she wants him. “Yes.”

He stands and pulls, his grip iron at her wrist, and she more than happy for it. Inside the door where she waited those uncertain hours, he stops and backs her against the wall, and here is a good place, yes, but one kiss later he moves on again, to stop at the staircase, the banister pressed above her hips, and Marian chases his mouth but he’s pulling her again, up the stairs, and at last into a bedroom, and before he can pin her Marian pushes him onto the straw mattress and he falls back without resistance. “Hawke,” he says, need raw in his voice.

She unlaces her jerkin. He watches. Watches, too, as she pulls off the torn tunic. And that’s enough of being away from him--she straddles his hips and reaches to find a catch to his breastplate. He rolls her to her back easily, reaches one-handed to unbuckle his armor, sets the breastplate and pauldrons and belt silently on the floor.

And when Marian sits up and reaches for his tunic, Fenris starts on the wrappings at her chest, and every time he has to pull them away behind her he leans in to nip at her collarbone, and somehow between that and the foreign clasps of his tunic, she still manages to get him bare first.

The sight of him is better than wine: lean and dark, abdomen tensing with each quick breath. She reaches for him but his head dips the instant he frees her breasts, and he takes her nipple between his lips, and Marian hisses a curse and arches. His hand is waiting for the back of her neck. With the other he presses her down, and then hooks his fingers at her waistband. She lifts her hips, clutching his hair. His mouth still hot at her breast, he relieves her of her trousers and smalls, and grunts in irritation when the effort ends at her feet.

“Why boots,” he mutters, moving to wrest them off.

It occurs to Marian that he may be having trouble with the common tongue just now, and she derives no small joy from the idea that anything about her so addles him as he does her. “Cold feet,” she answers.

He checks hers, palms on soles, then his hands move up her ankles to her calves, guiding them back to either side of his waist. “Not now.”

“No,” she agrees, and with his eyes on her, Fenris keeps her calves up, and bends low, and Marian discovers he has no trouble at all with his tongue.

She is a quivering mess when he leans over to kiss her again. “Hawke,” he says against her mouth. She digs her heels into the back of his thighs--and then remembers his leggings, and reaches down. He pushes her hands away and does it himself.

Marian regards the length of him. There is a joke to be made, about how glad she is that this isn’t a virgin sacrifice, but no sooner does she start to smirk than his mouth is on hers again. And that’s fine. Why run the risk of being shunned from his bed?

One arm crooked beneath her knee, the other hand at her wrist, he sinks into her. His face goes slack. Marian holds her breath until his hips are flush with hers, and then she lets it out, unsteady. “Fenris,” she sighs.

He starts to move. Her breath becomes a moan, a cry. He catches it in his mouth, turns over, brings her with him. Waits as she finds her balance and starts to move. Follows her rhythm, thrusts up to meet her downstroke. Slides his palm up over her belly to cup one breast. Gazes up at her, and that, ultimately, is what tips her over the edge. Marian clenches--her hands in his hair, her cunt around him--and loses herself in the throes.

Fenris’s hands grip her shoulders, warm and mindful of her wound. He turns them once more, settling her on her side. Back from a temporary oblivion, Marian pulls him close, his brow to her chest. His breath grows ragged as he thrusts. The lyrium lights, and he groans.

When he finishes with a last shuddering breath, Marian smoothes his hair away from his brow. He blinks at her, drowsy and charmingly owlish. She grins at him, and spies a flash of his teeth before he presses his face against her once more.

Well satisfied, Marian sleeps. 

* * *

And walks home scarcely an hour later. The bonfire is down to embers, the flesh charred from the hunters’ bones.

Her jerkin, wrappings, sword, and belt are bundled in her arms, her tunic too thin by itself. The night wind carries a chill. The weather will turn soon.

She tries to let the waves of emotion wash over her, but by the time she reaches her door, she’s drowning.

The dog looks up when she enters. The twins on their cots pretend to sleep. There’s no movement behind her mother’s door.

Marian leaves her things on the table and climbs to the draughty loft. She sinks into the straw, curled around nothing, cold to the bone.

Below, a scuffle, quiet and careful--Carver reaching for boots and sword. “No,” Bethany hisses, and then continues, softer.

A moment later a cot creaks as Carver settles back onto it. A moment after that Bethany’s hand appears over the edge of the loft.

She sets down a tiny glass bottle, a thimble’s worth of tincture. And then Bethany, too, goes back to bed.

Quietly as she can, Marian opens the bottle and swallows the contents.

It’s bitter. She should have expected that.


	3. Tithe to Hell

Autumn robs what greenery there is near Lothering. Game is plentiful for a while, and consequently their supply of clay jars will last through winter.

On days when the sun is out Marian hunts, and slays spiders. On days when it rains too much for that she goes for long walks with her much-mended cloak wrapped tight about her, and stays away from the west ridge.

On a morning when the first frost feels imminent, she sends the dog over with a sack containing a scarf, knit by old Miriam out of a batch of coarse wool that dyed up strikingly red. Max returns carrying a bundle of elfroot, and Marian leaves for a long walk. They weren’t _ready_.

On an afternoon that seems otherwise unremarkable, the elf girl Marian keeps on retainer approaches in the market. “Miss, a strange lady in the Refuge last night. Fancy clothes. She traveled with a party. Said she liked Danal’s food, an’ it were a shame she’d not be stopping on her way back through.”

A conspicuous amount of information. “When did she leave?”

“Midmorning, south on the Highway.”

Marian takes a coin from the purse and folds it into the girl’s hand, and she dips her head and ducks out of the stall. Bethany peers at her. Marian shakes her head, and they finish out the day.

That evening she sets the oats she burnt for dinner outside the front door for Max to make a mess of. She glances west. There is a sunset glow over the ridge, but it’s an hour past dusk.

She goes back inside, and fetches her jerkin and sword. “Where are you going?” her mother demands.

She pulls on her cloak. “Lock the door.”

She goes up the ridge, knowing without looking that Carver and Bethany are behind her, and grateful for it.

She reaches the top of the ridge, and the breath goes out of her.

The house is as yet untouched, but the garden burns, even the crops that should not be dry enough. They must have gone south a ways on the Highway and then circled back through the wilderness, crossing at the break.

She squints into the glare, searching for a white horse that would be dead or else careening, frothy with panic. There is no sign.

She reaches behind her and Carver is there, ready. “Go to Dane’s. Ask for help putting it out.” Her voice sounds flayed. “And then meet us at the Highway.” He’s already down the ridge.

Marian watches the landscape for another moment before she walks toward the house, and the Highway beyond. Bethany and Max follow. This would be an excellent time for a trap, if the hunters know about her and need bait. If they care at all. If they don’t already have what they came for.

Even through the flames, she can see how carefully the garden beds were tended.

They pass the house, and the edge of the woods, without incident. Except for the fire and the chill wind, all is silent. And would have been, Marian realizes, if Fenris caught wind and ran south. If there had been a fight at the house, Max at least would have heard.

Small comfort.

In the shadows by the staircase they wait. Marian listens to the wind, which blows where it will. Around their father’s staff, Bethany’s knuckles are white.

Seconds after Max’s ears perk, Marian hears the chime of a bridle. Torchlight brightens the hillside before them, the shadow of the staircase dancing.

 _Ice_ , she mouths to Bethany, and Bethany nods, and Marian leans to her right to look past a broken stone column. The legs of a black horse pass, ascending the stairs to the Highway proper, hooves loud on the stone. Its rider has fine boots and a gilt-trimmed robe.

There are shouts from the direction of the river. The townsfolk, too preoccupied with the fire to notice the procession, except perhaps for one. Silently she wills Carver to wait another moment.

Two brown horses, sabatons in the stirrups. Marian raises her hand.

The white horse, sheened with sweat from a hard run, climbs the stairs reluctantly. Bare feet dangle. Marian drops her hand. Bethany raises her staff. Max leaps forward.

With the first blast of cold Marian takes the lower stairs three at a time, shedding her cloak. She glimpses four more brown horses, two with armed riders and two with empty saddles, but her eyes are on the white horse alone, which stands still despite the ring of steel and the sting of frost shards, as if waiting for her.

It is as easy to pull Fenris down as it was for him to hoist her up, an age ago. They land on the staircase’s lower platform, her left arm about his waist and her right holding her sword. A pack slides off his shoulder, his armor and sword and the red scarf spilling out. His hands are bound, and the rope must be enchanted somehow. Above them she hears a cry of rage; distantly she notes a green-black fog rolling down the stairs. Marian pulls the hood off Fenris’s head.

And finds in her grasp a grey wolf, jaws snapping, ribs gaunt beneath its fur. Foul vapor rises from its maw.

It is exactly the sort of nightmare that one would expect to plague a Fereldan farmgirl, if one had never met a Fereldan farmgirl, and Marian has half a mind to sneer at their lack of creativity.

She drops her sword and locks both arms around him now, goes to her knees and presses her face to the side of the wolf’s neck. Let them try. They think visions will work, only because they think she must be afraid of him, because _they_ know no other way to be.

The wolf is on fire, is a coal that will never go out until it blackens her bones, is a burning nameless hunter’s corpse. It’s not real, for there is no pain to accompany her instinctive panic, and so she is still, holding fire. Let them try.

They make him half a hundred other forms. The form doesn’t matter. She is unafraid, and she will not yield him up.

Then there _is_ pain, and the fire dies, the wolf twists from her hold, its jaws tear into the soft flesh beneath her ribs, and Marian screams. The wolf’s eyes and teeth blaze blue-white.

The vision warps again, and this is the cruelest of all, the one that can only be their making, because she would not even think to fear this, because he would _never_ \--

Fenris’s hand shifts, delivering shrieking agony. This is real.

She screams again.

“They shot you,” he says, voice terse but singularly calm. A thing to hold onto as the fog clears, the horror lifts. “They shot you, Hawke. Be still.”

She has no words, only a long groan of pain as he pulls his fingers out from her side. He holds up the broken-off point of a crossbow bolt for her to see. Marian lets out a brittle laugh. Fenris sets his unbloodied hand at her cheek, and then he stands and turns away.

Without him Marian droops backward, but Max is there, and she rests against his side. There are four dead hunters on the stairs, and seven live horses up on the Highway, and the white horse down on the grass, and the twins holding the upper staircase, Bethany with her staff blade-up like an ornate spear.

Fenris climbs the stairs. Beyond him, someone Marian can’t see says, “I should have taken your eyes out. I should have--no, wait, _wait_ \--”

He tosses the magister’s heart to the side on his way back down the stairs. (“Shit,” says Carver, very softly.)

“Come home,” Marian says when Fenris is before her once more. They’re both shaking now. She starts to specify her home, because his will smell like smoke a while yet, but he pulls her to him so fiercely that she supposes he takes her meaning.

Bethany comes over to press a cool healing spell against Marian’s side, and Carver gathers a torch and Fenris’s things and brings Marian’s cloak, and Marian puts it over her and Fenris’s shoulders alike, and they and the twins and the dog and the horse walk back across the darkened field. The fire in the garden is doused, Cairthaugh saved, and the townsfolk back where they belong. They cross over the west ridge.

No light shows through the cracks in the old stable. “It’s us,” Bethany calls. Marian hears the lock turn. Carver’s torch shines on her mother’s face as she eyes them.

Marian expects she looks like a wrung dishrag, but she has ever been the one to come home with bloody rips in her clothes, and why stop at the age of twenty-three?

“Come in,” says Leandra Hawke, and Marian feels a line of tension ease across Fenris’s shoulders.

Bethany lights a candle. There is a basin and clean rags waiting on the table, but Bethany already closed the cuts Carver sustained. Fenris has only bruises. He puts his hand in the basin. Marian’s blood and the magister’s, mingled, clouds the water.

When Fenris’s hand is clean, Carver takes the basin outside to spare Leandra, who looks a bit wan.

Marian steps out from under the cloak and sets her head on her mother’s shoulder, and Leandra clings to her for several breaths, her pulse like a bird’s. “Go to bed,” Marian tells her, and she nods.

After their mother’s door closes, Marian pulls the twins to her by the scruffs of their necks, and holds them until they squirm.

The climb to the loft stretches her side painfully, and she stops a moment in the straw to put pressure on the spot. Fenris crouches beside her until she nods. The space is narrow, so Marian wraps herself around him and pulls her cloak to their hips. His face comes to rest against her throat, his breath warming her collarbone. Her hands find his chest, and his free arm lies across her ribs, well above the healed wound. She feels the weight of it every time she inhales.

Outside she hears the cold night wind, but it doesn’t reach her. Her bower has never been so warm.

* * *

Light. Warm. Too warm, here where the heat from the stove rises. The smell of oats, not burnt.

Lips. Breath. “Hawke.” Quiet, but the house is small.

A murmur from below. Another, agreeing.

“ _Yes_.” Her brother’s voice, booming more than usual. “ _Splendid_ idea, Mother. We’ll _very loudly_ take a _walk_ on this _freezing morning_ and _return_ when the _porridge_ is _cool_. Which I hope will be very, _very_ soon. _Ow_.”

The door creaks shut. “Hawke.” Weight on top of her. “Marian.” Marian wakes for true now.

Hunger in Fenris’s grass green eyes. She kisses him. He works her free from her bloodstained tunic but doesn’t bother with the wrappings, or indeed with anything else save pulling her trousers and his leggings low enough and pressing his hand to her. Time is short.

For all that, their lovemaking lacks any urgency, and all occurs in its own time.

When Fenris stills, Marian puts her palms on his face and looks into his eyes. He shakes his head. Marian holds him.

The door opens. Carver stomps in. “Returning _loudly_. Is the _porridge cool_?”

“The porridge is cool,” Marian reports, breathless. Fenris buries his face at her chest; she can feel his teeth. 

“I repeat, is it _safe_?”

“Yes, _idiot_.”

“Not safe if naked.” Her tunic appears beside the loft on the end of the broom.

“Not naked if boots,” she replies.

Carver makes a tortured sound.

Marian puts her tunic back on and descends the ladder in time to ladle out the oats for her family. She gives Carver a double helping, for his courtesy. Fenris gets the greater portion of honey from the comb. Into her own Marian stirs the tincture Bethany passes her.

She is halfway done with her bowl when her manners return. “Mother,” she says, interrupting the twins’ bickering over where to built a smokehouse. “This is Fenris. He kept us in fresh elfroot this summer.” And then, because she has to be shit, Marian adds, “We’re lovers.”

Leandra gives her eldest a look that could wither an oak, but her eyes are kind when she turns them on Fenris, who is staring fixedly at the table. “You’re most welcome here, Fenris.”

Fenris’s gaze rises to meet hers. His voice is all deference. “Thank you… Lady.”

Bethany and Carver trade a glance. Leandra’s eyebrows rise, and she adjusts her posture just slightly. “Well, it’s been an age since I heard that, but I can’t say I mind.”

“Don’t give her airs,” Marian warns, but Fenris’s smile tells her he knows exactly what he’s doing.

* * *

Early in the spring, they uncork the jug of wine.

It’s young yet, and complex. More than a little bitter due to inexpert racking, with a certain smoky quality. And Marian isn’t sure if they got some elfroot in with the grapes, or if it’s a result of sharing the same soil, but there’s something indefinably restorative about it. “Ah, yes,” she says, forcing a pompous accent as she sits back beside Fenris on the front steps, “Cairthaugh 9:29 Dragon. A fine vintage.”

Fenris hides his smile behind one of the wineglasses she bought for this occasion. “The next crop will be better.”

And so it will. They turned the thawed soil today--the ashes of the old garden will feed the new. For now though, what they have is enough.

Marian leans against Fenris, and the sun sets over Cairthaugh.


End file.
